Hi everyone I have been useless at updating my journal recently, so i will give you quick run down of what we've been up to! Sydney is a brilliant city and apart from the last couple of days we have been so lucky with the weather, so we've been pretty busy trying to get round to all the places before we leave tonight. The Blue Mountains trip was brilliant, the weather was perfect for it, we stopped off first at this tiny town which was very pretty and bustly before getting to the mountains. They have a blue haze over them due to the sap from the gum trees evaporating or something like that, but they were so much bigger than i had expected! No wonder so many people get lost on bush walks. The centre itself was a buit disappointing, we got a couple of cable cars to get us into position for some great views and then this petrifying train ride which used to be the train that carried coal up the side of the mountain. It looked very pleasant and we had some tiny plastic chain hanging by our side to 'hold us in' but it literally went to almost verticle position and my feet couldn't reach the floor to hold me in my seat so i felt like i was going to fly head first down the mountain. Anyway when we eventually made all these little connections we got to some pretty 'bushland' and there was a 50min walk through the woods- but that was it, we couldn't see the mountains at all, and whilst the walk was very pleasant, it wasn't really what we had paid to go to the blue mountains for. Thankfully our coach driver was a bit of a keen bean and took us to lots of different look outs where we could get some amazing views- so plenty of pictures to bore you with! We then had a tour of the Olympic stadium and the olympic village which was pretty cool, and ended the day with a river 'cruise' back to the city. Unfortunately, it got dark really quickly and the city wasn't quite light up so all we saw for the hour was our own reflections staring back at us.........as lovely as they are, it wasn't what we expected, so that was a bit of shame! We cut our losses re the hostal- after a fight broke out in the early hours and we were woken by lots of screaming. Our new hostal was brilliant so we did slow down a bit and have some chilled out evenings- think the 4months of non stop moving caught up with us. But we were still busy heading off to Bondi and Coogee and then we did a 5km coastal walk through Bronte beach etc which was so pretty and there were lots of surfers to admire! We also went to the Chinese friendship garden and had lunch at Darling harbour where a boat show was on, so we were surrounded by absolutely stunning yachts!! Very nice. We also went to the Australian Museum and Hyde park and revisted my favourite place Paddington and all the shopping areas ( i was well behaved) on numerous occasions! Its been fantastic. The last few days and nights have been a bit messy, we had some great guys in our dorm who are travelling the same route as us, so we have been out to various bars with them and struggling to recover during the day! Last night we got a 13 hour coach journey to Byron Bay, so Claire and i literally crashed out in our hostal today (claire is still crashed out there) before we head out to Cheekey Monkeys tonight which seems to be renound in Australia so should be a good night! Will try and put some pics up- and keep more updated! hope everyone is well tasha xx